For some, the savory, cured pork might as well be its own food group. Find someone who doesn’t like bacon, and you’ve probably found a vegetarian. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Three Northeast Ohioans — Jon Ashton of Middleburg Heights and Matt Heyman and Dylan Doss of Norwalk — bet on bacon when they competed on the fifth season of the Food Network show “The Great Food Truck Race,” which starts airing at 9 p.m. Aug. 17 on the cable channel. On the show, eight teams are given a food truck to operate, each team trying to outsell the others — and thus avoid the elimination of one team — as they travel among a handful of cities.

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The local trio’s truck? Let There Be Bacon.

“Bacon is huge in the U.S. — everybody loves bacon,” says Heyman, during a joint phone interview with Ashton. “But bacon’s also a world food.

“Everything’s better with bacon,” he continues, “so it just made sense to sing the praises of bacon and let bacon do its thing.”

And while the vegetarians may just want to move on to another truck, the guys say they attempted to serve dishes that were interesting beyond the pork component. For example, they used a lot of pickled ingredients in their cuisine.

“We don’t want to be known as ‘The Heart Attack Truck,’” Ashton says, “but, when it comes down to it, we’re serving a lot of pork belly.”

Bacon feels like a fairly appropriate food to represent this region, doesn’t it?

“That may have had something to do with it,” Ashton says.

On the premiere episode, you’ll see them make and sell their Double Trucker Cheeseburger, which boasts apple-bacon jam and their house coleslaw, and Buckeye Bacon Pancakes, which, along with pork, packs in peanut butter and chocolate.

“I was telling everybody, ‘We don’t do health food. We’re from the Midwest. We do survival food. We need something to carry us through the winter,’” Heyman adds.

Survival is the name of the game on the “The Great Food Truck Race,” which began for the guys with an application, followed by audition tapes and interviews.

“It’s a lot of back-and-forth with the casting people,” Heyman says. “You’ve got to be able to cook and talk at the same time.”

They found out in the spring they’d be on the show.

“It was one of the most exciting things that’s happened to me in a while,” Heyman says.

Well, at least the good kind of exciting. In recent years, he had won a cancer battle, but that ordeal left him with back problems a year ago.

“I went on the show to see what I could do,” says Heyman, who’s cooked at Cleveland-area restaurants including TownHall in Ohio City and Parallax in Tremont. “I wasn’t really sure I could do kitchen work anymore. It was a good litmus test.”

The winning team not only gets $50,000 but also is allowed to keep the food truck. For Ashton, it was an opportunity for greater independence.

“I wanted to work for myself, and I want to not have to get up every day and punch a clock,” he says. “I’d rather work 80 hours a week if it’s for me.”

The guys are prohibited from saying how well they did — even whether they will be seen past the season premiere — but they did say the competition wasn’t easy and that it was full of surprises

“We had a very challenging time when we were there,” Ashton says. “It’s much different cooking out of a white-tablecloth kitchen than cooking out of the back of a food truck.”
They had less equipment and a lot less space, so time management and food prep were more important than ever.

“It was challenging — we basically had a flat top and a deep fryer and some refrigeration,” Ashton says. “We had this whole grand menu planned out, same as we would in a restaurant.”

“I think we all looked at each other and said, ‘Are we going to be able to do what we’ve planned on doing?’” Heyman recalls.

Adds Ashton about the truck’s kitchen, “I think the words that came out of my mouth were, ‘Where’s the rest of it?’”

Oh, and considering these are three guys from Northeast Ohio who are pro-bacon, it may not come as a surprise that things got a little tight.

“There’s a lot of man walkin’ around the back of that truck, too, man,” Ashton says. “I’m 225 pounds.”

They’re big guys with big personalities, they say, and while they couldn’t hide the former, they weren’t going to hide the latter.

“I told Matt and Dylan going into this we were going to be ourselves,” Ashton says. “It would come across more real if we were just us.”

They haven’t seen any of the footage but don’t seem to be too worried about producers editing for maximum dramatic effect — as those who make reality-competition shows tend to do.

“We gave them lots of drama,” Ashton says. “We’re very outspoken guys. We’re not rude, but we’re definitely forward.”

Heyman says he’s certainly interested in watching the show.
“I know how it felt, but I don’t know how it looked,” he says.

They have nothing but great things to say about the host of “The Great Food Truck Race,” Tyler Florence.

“Absolutely anything we needed to know, the guy was right there,” Ashton says. “Hell of a good cook, too.”

Asked to sum up their experience, they uttered a one word answer in unison.

About the Author

Mark is a lifelong Northeast Ohioan and an Ohio University grad. Along with loving music, movies and television, he is crazy about sports and tech. Reach the author at mmeszoros@news-herald.com
or follow Mark on Twitter: @MarkMeszoros.